2010 Olympics: Plushenko Takes Silver, Complains He was Robbed. Hey, Geni, Lysacek Don't Need No Steekin' Quad! He Can Skate!

2010 Olympic silver medallist Evgeni Plushenko showed his disdain for all things Olympic by taking a "short cut" to the silver medallist podium across the platform reserved for gold medallist Evan Lysacek. And he did so with a smirk on his face. Can you spell "poor sport?"

Evgeni Plushenko is mewling to everyone who will listen that he was robbed because Evan Lysacek won the gold without doing a quad, claiming "You can't be considered a true men's champion without a quad." He then insinuated that if you don't do a quad, you are not a "man," stating "Without the quadruple, I'm sorry, but it's not men." (Give me a break. And what kind of name is "Evgeni" anyway?)

The live chats on the Official Olympic site, two days later, were still debating Lysacek's win. All of Russia is up in arms, feeling unjustly cheated. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin entered the fray, publicly stating that Plushenko deserved gold. So convinced that the quad is everything, even Russian legendary Russian coach Alexei Mishin said. "Twenty years ago, we needed quad to win. And now we don't need to do quad?" He then noted the Olympic motto of "Faster, higher, stronger," and added, "The rule will be changed."

Evan Lysacek's response to Plushenko's whining and Russia' outrage was, "I spent the last year perfecting 4 minutes, 40 seconds. If the medal was for your best jump, they would give you 10 seconds and no music."

"Without quad," Plushenko said, "it is not figure skating. It is dancing." News flash, Geni, it's called "ice skating," not "ice jumping." If only jumps, which are just 50% of the score, were considered, we might as well have an ice skating competition and an ice jumping competition. And Lysacek did more jumps, including more triple axels, in the second half of his program, where a 10% bonus is awarded. Whether you like it or not, fluidity and mastery of the elements between the jumps and spins, and going the distance when you're tired, count. Plushenko did all his hard jumps in the beginning of his program.

Plushenko is being a real ass about this, don't you think? While Lysacek did not attempt a quad, he excelled in artistry and footwork. And he landed his jumps cleanly. The truth be told, Plushenko's performance was sloppy, most of his jumps were not landed cleanly, and his positions in the air were crooked and awkward. His spins were slow and his footwork, while engaging, was not as good as Lysacek's. If you go to this site, and click on the "+" next to the skater's name, you can see the breakdown that clearly shows Lysasek's technical marks were higher than Plushenko's.

Shall we talk about being robbed of gold medals? Let's travel back to 1994, when even Nancy Kerrigan's almost blind mother could see that Ukranian Oksana Baiul made significant mistakes in a less technical program, landing only four jumps, none of them combos, while Kerrigan did five clean triple jumps, two in combination. And yet Baiul was awarded the gold.

Or shall we bring up the 2002 Olympics where, in a deal with the Russians, a Canadian judge was "pressured" to favor the Russian figure skating team over the Canadians in return for the Russians favoring a French ice dancing team?

And shall we go into the suspicion that Russian track and field gold medallists in the 1960s, Tamara and Irina Press, were really men. When mandatory chromosome testing was introduced in 1966, the "sisters" withdrew from the European Championships and vanished from the public eye.

I could go on, but the point is that Russian athletes have taken home quite a few gold medals that they didn't deserve (all breathing a sigh of relief that they would not be sent to the Gulag or their parents evicted from their government apartments). Furthermore, Plushenko's statement that he returned because he "missed competition" was refuted when it was revealed that he only came out of retirement because the Russian Federation "approached" him. He's probably lucky there isn't a "gulag" anymore.

The Eastern Europeans and Russians always favored their own, most particularly in the ice dancing and figure skating. Now that we have a fair scoring system, they can't stand it. They also can't stand that they're being massacred in the total medal count in Vancouver, and had counted on Plushenko's gold.

Boohoo, the Russians think they were dissed. Too bad, Lysacek was better. We got the gold legitimately and without cheating. We're keeping it. Take your quad and shove it.

More by this writer: Lysacek Takes Gold in Men's Figure Skating
Sources: Lysacek gold fails to silence quad debate; Men's Free Program results; Baiul Wins Gold Medal; Tamara and Irina Press; 2002 Olympic Judging Scandal